“... in case anyone had missed the point of Bush’s statement, his deputy national security adviser, Robert Gates (now Obama’s secretary of defence), spelled it out a few weeks later: ‘Saddam is discredited and cannot be redeemed. His leadership will never be accepted by the world community. Therefore,’ Gates continued, ‘Iraqis will pay the price while ...”

“... of her. The recording comes from a film called Broadway Melody of 1938 in which Garland stars with Robert Taylor and Eleanor Powell. It was her first feature-length film for MGM. She had performed the song earlier that year at Gable’s on-set birthday celebrations: he was the studio’s biggest star. Garland made a surprise appearance at the party, posing as ...”

“... with these two books; even the names of the poets – Charles Tomlinson, or David Gascoyne, or Robert Conquest, or John Holloway, or Christopher Middleton, or Geoffrey Hill – stood for a world that was fully England. Looking at the list of poets was like having one’s Irish nose pushed up against the polished glass of a posh window in some imaginary Big ...”

“... silver in the age of Web 2.0, Thomson has since added, is open to doubt. But that doesn’t stop Robert Gottlieb from presenting himself, at the start of his new biography, as an unapologetic negative theologian. ‘She’s still hiding – no one will ever know what was taking place behind those amazing eyes. Only the camera knew.’The story of Garbo’s ...”

“... he goes to Buckingham Palace to get his CH is the day a bit of the ceiling falls in.5 February. Ray, the barber to whom I go for a haircut in Cambridge, tells me how many of his clients who voted enthusiastically for Blair are now complaining about him. But Ray’s clients aren’t being picked up by the Mori ...”

“... minutes later when his charred remains were found among the first casualties of the Martian death ray. Professor Pierson, meanwhile, had repaired to a nearby farmhouse, where he set up a makeshift transmitter. In words hard to make out behind a tinny echo, he gave a restrained account of what had passed at Grovers Mill. The Martians had found a way to ...”

“... the Tom and Viv bits which we are all likely to home in on.’ In 2022, with the second volume of Robert Crawford’s sensitive biography, it’s the Tom and Em bits.This is unfortunate: Eliot after ‘The Waste Land’ is a rich study of the period from 1922 until Eliot’s death in 1965 – years that contained much besides a complicated love ...”

“... in Hollywood in 1972. Fifteen famous directors are there, including John Ford, Rouben Mamoulian, Robert Mulligan, George Stevens, Robert Wise, William Wyler, Billy Wilder. Hitchcock sits next to Buñuel, says very little, then at one point puts an arm round his companion’s shoulder and says with deep ...”

“... they were following, in some measure and according to their capacity, the brilliant example of Robert Graves, whose coming to maturity as a poet was a matter of saying a decisive ‘goodbye’ not only to the war but to all ghosts and rubbish (including cast-off language) that threatened the living. It was in 1930 that T.S. Eliot wrote in Criterion, with ...”

“... for present-day feminist historians credit that should really go to pioneering historians such as Ray Strachey, J.A. and O. Banks and Constance Rover, who publicised the link between suffragism and sexuality well before the advent of women’s liberation. And neither Kent nor Walkowitz (much advertised here) breaks new ground in recognising the feminist ...”

“... on its way to meet an asteroid called Eros. This is not to mention infrared, ultraviolet, x-ray and optical telescopes orbiting the planet, peering into the farthest reaches of the universe. The most important thing in our lives now and at any time is the Sun: there are satellites orbiting it, monitoring it, measuring its hot breath. Satellites study ...”

“... naturally – to Sparta. Its catalogue of model leaders begins with the Confederate general Robert E. Lee, long idolised by McChrystal as a flawed but brilliant military commander, and moves on through a baffling assortment of characters ranging from Walt Disney and Coco Chanel (‘Founders’) to Martin Luther and Martin Luther King ...”

“... a radiant Brigitte Bardot – one eye furtively seeks out the camera’s gaze. He is posed by Man Ray, displaying his beautiful hands; Cecil Beaton photographs him smoking opium, in a sepia haze. He is portrayed by Philippe Halsman as a god with six arms, bearing pen, book, cigarette, scissors: caught between versions of himself, he becomes Cocteaux. As if ...”

“... twice Fodor thinks he spots old-fashioned legerdemain and doubts seep in. He brings in a secret X-ray machine to scan her person and he checks the provenance of the ancient terracotta oil lamp her poltergeist apparently pilfered from the Victoria and Albert Museum. (It’s not theirs.) Disappointed to discover a few objects secreted on her person, Fodor ...”

“... 1962 BBC recordings, and we must trust the diamond-hardness of Hardwick’s ear, sending out its ray like Marco’s stickpin in The Bell Jar: I was taken aback by Sylvia Plath reading. It was not anything like I could have imagined. Not a trace of the modest, retreating, humorous Worcester, Massachusetts of Elizabeth Bishop; nothing of the swallowed plain ...”